Why did the martial vigor of the Romans decline in the late Empire?

2 years ago
17

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One paradox of the late Western Roman Empire is, that despite having a very effective army, and actually winning many fights against the Barbarians, the Western field armies still completely dissolved in the course of the fifth century. How could this happen? Well, many civil wars actually caused the dissolution of the Western field armies, but that is only one part of the story, the other is, that the late empire had immense trouble in recruiting new soldiers into the ranks of the late legions. The Romans had become unwilling to fight for their empire, very different from the early empire and late republic, where new armies were raised in short amounts of time, even after giant disasters, such as against Hannibal or at Teutoburg forest. One reason was that an army career was far less rewarding in the late empire than in the early one. In the early empire one got a nice portion of land and could actually earn good money as a soldier, whereas in the late empire, one earned almost nothing, it was forced conscription with very little reward. Thus, new recruits were really difficult to find, and could at some point only be gained in the war-torn border provinces of Illyricum or Pannonia, where the local Romans were used to war, but almost impossible to recruit from Italy, where living standards were much higher. Italians had simply become unwilling to fight for an empire that would not reward them any more for them risking their lives.

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